


i'd rather end the world

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, M/M, and some things take time, in which the sheriff dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-07 22:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sheriff dies on a Wednesday, and Stiles isn't sure he can feel anything any more. But then, as always, there's Derek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'd rather end the world

**Author's Note:**

> One day I need to stop just writing sad things.
> 
> Title is from the song 'Senescence' by Cherax Destructor, which greatly inspired this - listen [here](http://cheraxdestructor.bandcamp.com/track/senescence).

 

The Sheriff dies on a Wednesday.

Stiles hates Wednesdays, has for as long as he can remember.

In the future, he’ll say this from time to time, and his audience of the moment will exchange solemn glances as if they understand perfectly. As if they’re making this connection, of Stiles with Wednesdays and with loss. Except that that’s just stupid, future Stiles will think as he watches these glances happen, because his father’s funeral was on a Tuesday and he holds no ill will towards those.

His mother didn’t die on a Wednesday. She died on a Saturday. Her funeral was a Thursday.

So there, future Stiles will think as the glance ends and his audience of the moment turn back to him with faces softened by sympathy that wasn’t there a second ago. Even if he was talking about something stupid, like how his breakfast was burnt that morning, or traffic was slow, or another part fell off his jeep. That god awful sympathy never fails to make an appearance.

But Stiles hates Wednesdays because there’s just something so banal about Wednesdays. They’re a sickly fluoro orange and they smell like burning rubber. They’re the day he realises he forgot his keys, and the day he comes down with the flu, and the day he opens the fridge in the morning and the milk is off.

So it’s kind of perfect, actually, that the Sheriff dies on a Wednesday.

When that thought crosses his mind, as he sits in some random hospital room waiting to sign the death certificate, Stiles is just too tired to berate himself for how awfully inappropriate it is. He’s tired, and this weird kind of numbness had settled over him about an hour back, so he lets it slide.

When his phone had rung earlier that day, and he’d been told to come down to the hospital, he’d been a mess of emotions. Like everything he’d ever felt had reared up inside him and started a revolt.

But then he’d walked through the doors looking for his father and he’d been taken to him, and the second he laid eyes on that lifeless body that didn’t hold his father any more it all went away. Like the bottom fell out of him and with it went everything.

And it’s weird, but he’s glad for the numbness, and the tiredness. They’re how he got through being told by a man in a coat words like “gunshot wound” and “bled out” and “I’m sorry”. They’re how he managed to think “my dad is dead” and “I’m an orphan” and not throw up or burst into tears or anything that he had expected.

Inside his head, for the first time in nineteen years, it’s just-

Quiet.

*

Scott picks him up, because that’s what Scott can do. In the car on the way home, after so many hours at the hospital, Stiles can’t bring himself to say anything. Scott doesn’t either. Maybe he’s thinking about his own missing father, or maybe he just knows there’s nothing to say at this point. It actually makes Stiles almost smile, the tiniest quirk of lips, to think of how helpless his best friend is. His best, werewolf friend. Scott has all the power in the supernatural world but Stiles has a dead dad so, there. Checkmate.

There are people in his kitchen when they arrive home, Scott’s mother and Allison and Lydia. The humans have descended. They offer to make Stiles dinner, or tea, or anything, and he just looks at them and turns and walks upstairs. They’re still in the kitchen an hour later, the hum of their voices rising through the floorboards, but Stiles stays in his room and eats nothing. He just lies on the floor and listens to that murmur below him.

He feels glad that the house isn’t empty, and then he feels relieved that he can still feel glad about something, and that’s good, the emotions still work, they’re there. But the numbness hasn’t quite lifted either, the white settled quiet of his mind is still in place. It’s a bit like having a layer of frosted glass over everything inside him.

At some point he falls asleep, there on the floor, and when he starts awake the room is dark and the clock says it’s just past three in the morning. His neck hurts, and his wrist is tingling with pins and needles. He pushes himself up, slowly, slowly.

There’s a werewolf on his windowsill.

It takes a second for Stiles to realise, because the gloom is so perfect, but as his eyes focus and shapes appear in the dark, so too does the figure silhouetted against the night time sky.

“Stiles,” says a low voice, and the slightest movement comes with it. Derek is leaning against the frame of the window, one leg propped up and the other dangling into Stiles’ room.

“How long have you been there?” Stiles asks blearily, finally arriving in a sitting position. He can make out Derek’s shrug.

“Twenty minutes, maybe.”

Stiles rubs at his eyes. “Have you thought about sending your condolences the not creepy way?”

Derek doesn’t reply, not at first. Then – “I’m sorry about your father.”

Stiles doesn’t really know what to say to that. Somehow he’s actually made it almost the entire day without anyone telling him that stupid phrase. Well, a couple of the doctors at the hospital, but Stiles ignored them. He was allowed to ignore them.

When Stiles doesn’t get around to actually saying anything, Derek just puts a hand on the window and swings it closed behind him as he drops off the roof into the dark and disappears. 

*

Day two of having a dead father is possibly worse than day one. Stiles doesn’t wake up alone, there’s people in his kitchen again and he guesses they stayed over. On the couches, he hopes. He can’t take the thought of someone sleeping in his father’s bed.

His father isn’t sleeping in that bed. The thought is cold and alien and unwelcome, but it can’t be ignored. Stiles will try anyway.

When he comes downstairs, Mrs. McCall is making pancakes, which seems like an oddly festive food choice for this particular Thursday morning but Stiles doesn’t comment. She tells him she will be taking care of the funeral arrangements, and Stiles has never loved her more than at that moment.

He knows he’s an adult now, he’s nineteen and he has no parents so that’s not really negotiable is it. But god, the crap that needs to be done. Funeral plans and insurance and mortuary fees, it’s not anything Stiles was prepared to have to think about. Not at nineteen.

But Mrs. McCall tells him she’s here for him, to take care of him. She took time off work too, and Stiles manages to feel guilty about that because he knows how money can be for them.

Good, guilt still works. Another emotion he can tick off the list.

Scott and Allison appear when the pancakes are done and piled high on the table, and Stiles tries to sit with them, but he can’t really bring himself to say anything. The phone rings and Allison answers to a man from the mortuary on the other line, and Stiles feels guilty again because Allison went through all this too, not so long ago.

Stiles takes this as his cue to disappear.

He goes out into the back garden and lies on the ground, the overgrown lawn slightly damp beneath his back. He used to do this with his mother, when he was young. They’d watch clouds pass by and she’d explain the science of the universe to him. Even when he barely understood what she was saying, the sound of her voice put him at ease.

He tries to call it up from memory now, but it’s a useless exercise. He lost the exact way she used to sound about two years after her death. It’s been a lot longer than that now.

“What are you doing?”

It’s Derek, leaning against a tree about five feet away. Stiles can see him from the corner of his eye. He should be startled by Derek’s sudden appearance, but he’s so used to it by now it barely registers.

“Remembering things,” Stiles replies. He shifts his head so that he can take in where the wolf man stands, and a thought occurs to him. “Your family died,” he says, bluntly.

“They did,” Derek replies.

“What did you do?”

Derek stares, and for a second Stiles thinks he isn’t going to answer. “Ran away,” he says, his eyes closing. Stiles feels like he’s intruding on whatever is going on inside Derek right now. But that doesn’t stop him.

“Did that help?”

“No.”

Stiles shifts again, his gaze leaving Derek. He thinks maybe it’s making Derek uncomfortable, for Stiles to keep looking at him. He’s worried about spooking Derek, like a deer or something; the man disappears mid-conversation so often, it’s like his own personal art form.

“Is that why you came back? To your old house?” Stiles asks, and when Derek doesn’t answer and Stiles can’t see him in his peripheral vision he knows Derek’s run off like he normally does.

Stiles stays in the garden with the white noise in his head until the sun goes down, and no one bothers him.

*

The third and fourth day blend into each other. Stiles wakes up one of the mornings, he doesn’t know which, and knows he needs to start being present. He puts clothes on and walks downstairs and says hello and starts to help with organising things. Lydia is there at some point, and Erica appears too. He talks to a priest on the phone and he finds his dad’s computer passwords in a book in the front hall, and flowers arrive from his dad’s office.

And it hurts, god it hurts. But with the white noise settled over everything in his mind, it’s possible. Just barely, but it’s possible.

*

Derek appears on the fifth day.

Stiles didn’t realise he’d been waiting for him, until Derek appears again.

He’s sitting at Stiles’ desk when Stiles comes back upstairs after lunch, and this time it does startle him.

“Dude,” Stiles stutters out, frozen in the doorway. “Learn to use the front door.”

Derek offers a shrug, and Stiles doesn’t move, waiting for Derek to offer something. A reason for why he’s here. Derek doesn’t, just gets up and walks towards Stiles.

For a second Stiles is completely at a loss, not a clue where this is going. And then Derek gets near him and reaches out to place a hand on Stiles’ shoulder, and Stiles realises this is Derek’s version of a hug.

And Stiles lets him, closes his eyes and focuses on where Derek’s fingers press lightly into his shoulder. It feels real and solid and it occurs to Stiles that no one has touched him in the last four days, not since the sympathy hugs when he’d arrived home from the hospital.

His mind dredges up a memory of Scott telling him about anchors, when the werewolf transformation happens. At the time, he’d tried to get it, but it’s not like he had anything to compare it to.

Stiles doesn’t mean to be sentimental, or overwrought, or anything. He isn’t sure he’s even capable of that at the moment, not with the numbness that still wraps around his mind every waking second.

But the word flickers through him, _anchor_ , and he thinks maybe he understands.

*

On the sixth day, Stiles avoids everyone in his house and gets in his jeep at eleven in the morning.

He thinks he doesn’t know where he’s going; he just wants to drive somewhere. But he’s really not all that surprised when he winds up at the Hale house.

He sits, for minutes on end, just staring at the ruined building from the hood of his car. His eyes trace over the lines of the house, the scorch marks still visible on the outer walls, the overgrowth. In the past he’d often wondered why Derek didn’t bother to fix up the house. Stiles doesn’t pretend to understand now, not even now that he knows what it’s like to have no family left. It’s not the same for him. Not better, not worse. Just not the same. No instance of grief ever is.

Maybe the house is a monument, or a mausoleum, or just a memory. Stiles likes looking at it.

He doesn’t think he’s ever been this quiet for this many days at a time. It’s a foreign feeling to him. But it’s that white noise in his brain, it won’t break and it won’t give. It’s probably there for a reason, so Stiles isn’t poking at it like instinct would normally tell him to. He lets it be, and sits instead with the quiet and the house.

Derek appears in the doorway after Stiles has been there for maybe five minutes.

“Are you coming inside?” he asks, and Stiles thinks it’s almost gentle, that tone of voice. It’s not something he’s used to with Derek.

“I don’t think so,” Stiles replies. He stares at the house some more, and Derek stares at him, and they both don’t say anything for another five minutes.

When Derek disappears into the house, Stiles isn’t quite sure if that’s his cue to go. He doesn’t want to, so he’s pleased when Derek reappears a minute later with two beers.

“It’s not even midday, you alcoholic,” Stiles mutters as Derek approaches.

“You’re bad at accepting hospitality,” Derek replies.

“I’m underage.”

Derek quirks an eyebrow at him. “Do you care right now?”

And Stiles has to admit that no, in the grand scheme of things, it really isn’t that important. Not today anyway. Besides, most of the rest of the world lets you drink by age nineteen. Maybe for the day, Derek’s property can be another country.

*

He’s not quite sure how he and Derek manage to pass so much time and say so little of consequence. Just chatter, a snipe or two when Stiles manages to work up to it. Nothing that goes anywhere near Stiles and his emotions and his father. At one point, there passes nearly an entire hour without either of them saying a word.

At one point though, Stiles tells a story.

“When I was a kid, my dad took me camping,” he starts, and then he stops, because what was he trying to say? Oh, right. “We went out to this forest that was, like, two hours in the car to get to. Even though we live in freaking Beacon Hills which is ninety percent trees. Anyway we went on a hike one of the days and I slipped on a rock and fell into the gully. And when my dad came down after me he found me all curled up on the ground in a patch of ferns, and I was fine, but I was saying “I’m dead” over and over because I thought I was. And he didn’t tell me not to be stupid, he just sat there next to me telling me I wasn’t until I could get up again.”

There is silence for a second then, just the sound of Derek swigging some beer but not saying anything while Stiles lets his mind edge around to the point. “I was just thinking about it yesterday for some reason. Like, my dad telling me I’m not dead over and over. Because now he is. He’s dead.”

Stiles stops then, because it occurs to him that he’d just said it out loud. He hadn’t done that yet. His dad is dead and now he's said it out loud and Derek is just sitting there quietly, letting him.

“His funeral is tomorrow,” Derek says at last, breaking the silence, and Stiles nods.

“Yeah.”

His dad is dead and he’s said it out loud and the funeral is tomorrow. It is real and happening and the only thing Stiles can cling to in that moment is the way Derek leans into him, not saying anything else.

Stiles arrives home at nearly midnight, and there’s a note on the table for him about tomorrow and a handful of sleeping bodies on his couches. He climbs into bed alone and feels something new and good and awful released within him, pulling at him, tugging him down into sleep.

*

On the day of the funeral, Stiles wakes up to find a werewolf sitting in his window again. Immediately, it’s like a clamp loosens its hold on his chest, a hold that had been there when he’d gone to sleep and that he’d felt even in his dreams.

“Are you ready?” Derek asks, without anything pre-emptory. Stiles stares at him, still sleep-hazed and fighting off the remnants of that tar-slick of emotion that had crept into bed with him last night. He wishes the white noise would just come back, and it’s there, mostly, but when he looks at Derek it’s that much harder to grasp on to.

“Why are you doing this?” Stiles asks, and Derek doesn’t move, just looks some more.

“Do you want me to go?” he says finally, and Stiles doesn’t really know how to answer that. Derek is the only thing in the past few days that hasn’t been monochromatic for him. But the white noise is safe, and the white noise is comforting, so Stiles nods, just once.

Derek’s face is impassive as he turns and vanishes from the ledge, and something inside Stiles feels like it’s just snapped.

*

The funeral is a nightmare.

*

The wake is even worse.

*

Evening slinks in and Stiles want to throw something at it. His house is finally empty except for the McCalls, of course, who are watching television downstairs in the living room.

Stiles is sitting on the floor of his father’s room, crying. Finally, finally, crying.

It was the eulogy that did it. He was fine, he was cold, he was marble and ice, and he was getting all the words out until he’d seen Derek standing at the edge of the crowd.

In that second, he’d thought of all the times they’d been in danger, him and Scott and whoever else, and he’d felt earth shattering terror or pain or confusion until one of two people showed up: his father, or Derek.

Because his father had always come when he was needed, when Stiles needed him. That’s what fathers do. His father would appear, and Stiles would feel small and safe.

But Derek always showed up too. And everything would come into focus along with him. He didn’t make Stiles feel safe. He made Stiles feel strong.

In that second, he didn’t know how or why but it was just like that, like Derek had become the only way back for him, back from the space and the quiet and the distance. Back to the real world.

Seeing him in the crowd at his father’s funeral was like pulling the plug on an old tv, the white noise static and thrum vanishing in an instant. He’d heard his own voice break, and falter, and suddenly it had shocked into him.

He’d thought of his dad teaching him to ride a bike and drive a car and cook a meal. His dad at the front of his classroom on bring your father to school day, and drinking whiskey in his study in the evenings, and sitting in the stands at the lacrosse matches Stiles had actually gotten to play in, and even the ones he hadn’t. How the night his mother had died the two of them hadn’t let go of each other for hours.

His dad was dead.

Stiles isn’t really sure what happened after that, thinking about it. He might have finished his speech and stumbled back to his seat, possibly, and he remembers the coffin being lowered into the ground and then being back at the house while people told him how sorry they were and he wished they’d just leave.

But now there was this. Him. Left alone on the floor of his father’s room, unable to stop crying.

And there’s a werewolf sitting on the windowsill again.

When Stiles looks up and sees him, he feels. Everything.

*

Morning breaks on the eighth day of Stiles’ father being dead, and Stiles is awake in his bed, still in his funeral suit, on top of the sheets. His cheeks are hard with salt and his eyes hurt when he blinks.

He stares at the ceiling in the grey light of dawn, and then turns his head to take in the figure at his side.

“How do you feel?” Derek says, his voice muffled a little by the pillow his head is resting on. Stiles closes his eyes, briefly, trying to work that one out.

“Bad,” he says, because that’s about as articulate as he can manage when it comes to this. Because bad is right, so god damn bad. Every splinter of sadness and anger and hopelessness that he’d been crushing down into that bitter kind of numb and papered over with silence. But the white noise is gone now and it’s all been let out, and it’s hounding him, pushing at him, smothering him.

But then, there’s Derek at his side. He moves to place a hand on Stiles’ arm, and his touch brings the tiniest bit of peace with it. Stiles rolls over to face him, and Derek’s hand falls away.

They lie for a second or two, breathing together, and then Stiles leans forward and presses his lips to Derek’s. It’s just a whisper, a brush of their mouths together, but the awful feelings that had finally been released to run rampant through Stiles relent.

Just a little.

But it’s enough.

 


End file.
